Kevin O’Hare, Director of The Royal Ballet says of Frankenstein, ‘We all think that we know the story, but I think that Liam will bring it to life for us in so many ways. There will be the macabre and the gothic but there also is a love story in there.’

It’s hard to sum up a whole year in a few words. Not only were there both successes and disappointments, but for those of us lucky enough to work at the Royal Opera House, there was also all the work backstage to put the productions together. In a way, this is the biggest highlight of all: being allowed to work at the Royal Opera House means working with talented and passionate colleagues, and constantly meeting a flux of some of the world’s leading artists coming to work with us.

That said, I’ve picked out a few of my highlights of 2013:

Les Vêpres siciliennes

Introducing Norwegian director Stefan Herheim to UK audiences was something I was hugely looking forward to, and with him and Antonio Pappano getting on like a house on fire for Les Vêpres siciliennes, it was every bit as exciting as I'd hoped for. I was also the very first ever live presenter for a Royal Opera live cinema relay when Vêpres went out to audiences around the world – a wonderful way of sharing our work with tens of thousands around the world.

Directing Eugene Onegin

Directing Eugene Onegin was very special. Getting to work with all the people on the stage, in the chorus and orchestra, I felt like I had finally really arrived at the ROH. Although many audiences and critics did not like the production, I was also lucky to get a large number of very positive and passionate responses. Dividing opinion is not necessarily bad, when we talk about artistic work. I enjoy engaging and discussing with our audiences, both when I agree and when I don't.

Written on Skin

Maybe the highlight of the whole 2012–13 Season for me was the overwhelming success of the UK premiere of George Benjamin and Martin Crimp’s Written on Skin, which we co-commissioned. I have a passion for new music and it is always fascinating to watch a new work come to the stage, but it is rare for it to immediately capture the imagination of an audience in the way Written on Skin did.

Some of the things that make ROH very special do not necessarily get noticed by the general public. The Learning and Participation team at ROH are fantastic, and although some of their projects make a very visible impact, they do great work ‘under the radar’ too. Following the work of the Youth Opera Company, and seeing older people from community centres and housing schemes coming to ROH for the first time to sing together were just two examples of how it feels like ROH can make a difference.

Taking on the Linbury

During 2013, The Royal Opera took over the programming of all opera work in the Linbury Studio Theatre, which feels like a natural and important thing for us to do. It was wonderful to have as potent a piece as Gerald Barry’s Importance of Being Earnest in Ramin Gray’s strong production to start off the new era.

Any works that received their UK premiere between 1 April 2012 and 31 March 2013 were eligible for nomination for the British Composer Awards in a range of categories. View the full list of nominations.

Winners will be presented with awards at a ceremony on the 3 December at Goldsmith Hall in London, and will be the focus of a BBC Radio 3 broadcast about the Awards on Sunday 8 December 2013.

‘The music – it’s like being attacked by knives.’ But in a good way: Gerald Barry’s exuberant, ebullient, brilliantly fearsomely monstrous music sounds like nothing else. If, as an ENO staff member put it during rehearsals for Barry’s third opera, it can be a little like being chased by a serial killer, then at least it’s a serial killer festooned in jester’s finery, bells all a-jangling. Barry’s music is grotesque, poignant and beautiful all at once: there has possibly never been a composer better suited to opera-ing Wilde’s masterpiece The Importance of Being Earnest.

Barry was born in Clarecastle, County Clare, in 1952 and in the late 1970s took up scholarships with Schrat, Stockhausen, Cerha and Kagel (who noted his genius for getting scholarships). Early works have a clear Barry stamp: the disparate instruments in ‘____’ spiral through an almost-unfamiliar scale selected from a chart showing the locations of John Jenkins's manuscripts. Ø, scored for two pianos playing the same part at various octaves, introduces Barry's practice of adaptation through the unholy elevation of those non-harmonic passing notes that give melodies their particular thumbprint (here the unsuspecting victim is Irish folksong Bonny Kate). Both works are distinguished by an air of meaningful nonsensicality.

Barry returned to Ireland, scholarships exhausted, in 1981, and that year began his first opera, The Intelligence Park. It would take the best part of a decade to complete, during which time Barry’s interest in Baroque music qualities snowballed. In Dublin, 1753, composer Robert Paradies is struggling with his own opera. He falls in love with his rich fiancée Jerusha’s singing teacher, the castrato Serafino; and when Serafino elopes with Jerusha all hell breaks loose. So far, so operatic: but the music tightens the screws. Inspired by the ‘bizarre artificiality’ of his friend Vincent Dean’s libretto Barry's absurdist, beautiful work is largely based on abominated Bach chorales suspended through his now-signature acrobatic vocal lines.

Baroque inspiration continued in Barry’s second opera, The Triumph of Beauty and Deceit, commissioned by Channel 4 and updated from Handel’s oratorio The Triumph of Time and Truth by librettist Meredith Oakes. The fiendish vocal lines of the cast of five male singers writhe between sweet lyricism and patter that, in Barry’s words, ‘should have the impact of a bullet’. Barry's next opera was for a cast of six women (of whom one is mute): The Bitter Tears of Petra von Kant, which opened ENO's 2005/6 season. Here Barry took a more recent source, setting word for word Fassbinder’s 1970 play (and later film). Barry’s fourth stage work, La Plus Forte (The Stronger), is a 20-minute miniature written for Barbara Hannigan. As she put it: ‘Breathtaking! Brilliant! Horrendously difficult!’

Barry’s latest is The Importance of Being Earnest, receiving its UK stage premiere in the Linbury Studio Theatre in June. Algy’s insane Auld Lang Syne opens the opera and stomps throughout it; Cecily and Gwendolyn’s filthy Sprechstimme argument is accompanied by the smashing of 40 plates (‘I asked myself what would be an expression of their anger and I suddenly thought of breaking things’); a basso profondo Lady Bracknell spits out Schiller when she gets excited; and the machine-gun-paced, totally-not-contiguous vocal lines heighten what Barry terms the ‘play’s kind of hysteria’. It's exhilarating, demented and nightmarishly absurd; and, from Barry, we wouldn’t expect anything less.

The opera is exuberant bordering on outrageous, with instrumentation featuring megaphones, pistols and wellington boots. It also includes an ostinato for 40 plates, all of which are smashed by goggle-wearing percussionists. In short, it is a fitting match for Wilde’s absurdist comedy of manners.

'When you hear Gerald's music it is - in the best way - like a crazy child let who has been let loose with crayons and scribbled all over the manuscript,' says Ramin. 'The challenge is to keep that bubbly, champagne-like quality you can get off a concert performance, and make it live as a fully staged production.'

Ramin, the former Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre, met Barry at a concert performance of the opera in April 2012.

'Ramin felt it worked so well in concert that one of the tasks of the director was not to screw that up by the wrong kind of staging,' said Barry in an interview with Michael Dervan for The Royal Opera House Magazine, the publication of the Friends of Covent Garden. 'The theatre is written into the music, which is something I did instinctively.'

Following sell-out success at concert performances at the Barbican last April, Barry’s fast and furious score has already been hailed as a comic masterpiece. Pushing singers to the extremes of their vocal spectrum, the music careers from distorted snatches of Beethoven and Schoenberg, to fortissimo orchestral eruptions and melodic serenades. In another twist, the aging Lady Bracknell is sung by a bass, delivering the famous line ‘A handbag?’ as a violent retch.

'Sometimes I think of the opera as being like a jumper that's been turned inside out,' continues Ramin. 'It is the same thing it always was, just seen a different way. This goes right back to what Oscar Wilde's whole process was: the process of paradox, giving you something and absolutely turning it on its head. You re-think it, you re-see it and re-experience it.'

Afternoon tea has long been a favourite event in dramas, when its formalities and rituals can be stood on their head for fun, embarrassment and shock. Gerald Barry takes an unexpected direction presenting afternoon tea in his opera of Oscar Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest with a tea party that's a masterpiece of vitriol in the guise of utter politeness. But Wilde isn’t the only one to tackle how this ‘civilized’ institution can bring out the worst in people and so we thought we'd take a look at a few iconic afternoon teas. Cucumber sandwiches at the ready…

Everything about the Mad Hatter's tea party is wrong. It is held permanently at six o’clock as the Mad Hatter’s watch has stopped at that point, Alice is first offered wine – which they don’t in any case have, the Hatter accuses the March Hare of oiling his watch with butter, and the March Hare dips the Hatter's watch into his cup of tea to see if that will start it. The table is piled with unwashed crockery, so the Mad Hatter, Dormouse and March Hare just keep moving round to clean place settings (the servants here have passed from being taken for granted to being non-existent). The conversation has the trappings of polite exchanges, but constantly goes wrong, most famously when the Hatter asks the riddle: ‘Why is a raven like a writing desk?’ No one knows the answer; it is a conversational dead end. Nothing at this tea party functions: the timing, the food, the drink, the service, the conversation. It is the opposite of the ordered, polite, structured afternoon tea of a well-to-do Victorian household. Carroll pokes observational fun at daily routine.

The class-bound concerns of afternoon tea were picked on by Ivor Novello in his 1932 stage farce I Lived with You, made into a film the following year with many of the same actors. Novello himself plays the lead: a Russian prince who fled the Revolution and is adopted by a social-climbing middle-class household in Fulham. This family is full of pretensions, desperate to present an image above its station; the prince is used to doing exactly what he wants without fear of consequences, and inconsiderately encourages them to emulate him. The result is increasing chaos and confusion. Afternoon tea is the point at which everything finally goes horribly wrong. As a bit of social one-upmanship, the respectable ladies of the neighbourhood are invited to meet the Prince. The Prince insists that vodka takes the place of tea – but still served in the fine china cups and saucers: the cup that cheers and inebriates. Ultimately, the snobbish, middle-class women who play at being civilized through an increasing alcoholic haze provide the perfect audience for the noisy and revelatory appearance of the mistress of the husband of the house. The greater the veneer of social-climbing etiquette, the further the fall off the unvarnished pedestal.

In Mary Poppins, author P.L. Travers created a highly subversive character. On the surface the magical nanny is strict and formal in the novel, with an extra dose of charm in Julie Andrews’s portrayal in the Disney film. But Mary Poppins really exists to challenge and overturn pretty much anything that limits her children’s opportunities, hopes and imagination. She likes afternoon tea, and an idealized version is described in her perfect day out with the street-painter Bert. The pair jump into Bert’s pavement art of a lovely countryside scene and have afternoon tea with ‘a pile of raspberry jam-cakes as big as Mary Poppins’ waist’. But there is a more famous tea party in the book and film, held on the ceiling. Mary Poppins’s Uncle Albert is full of laughing gas, and the nanny’s two charges Jane and Michael Banks catch the same affliction. Uncle Albert, Jane, Michael and Mary Poppins all end up eating ‘piles of bread and butter, crumpets, coconut cakes and a large plum cake with pink icing’ while suspended near the ceiling. With her usual mock-show of disapproval, Mary Poppins describes such behaviour as ‘silly and undignified’ – but readily joins in. This tea party is a witty subversion of respectability and convention, and suggests something of the wide-eyed perspective of children trying to make sense of a confusing adult world of strange social rituals.

The opera, which includes megaphones, wellington boots and an ostinato for 40 plates, received rave reviews when it was performed in concert at The Barbican last year. The staged production, directed by former Associate Director of the Royal Court Theatre Ramin Gray, opens in the Linbury Studio Theatre on 14 June.

‘The forceful originality of this work smashes conventions alongside plates,’ commented judges. ‘Miraculously, it provides the most well-worn quotes with a freshness and originality’.

The awards, which were set up in 1989 and are judged by a jury of eminent musicians, are the highest accolade for live classical music in the UK.

Britten Sinfonia, who will play for the forthcoming production of The Importance of Being Earnest, won the award for Best Ensemble. They will also accompany Anthony and the Johnsons in their performance of Swanlights at the Royal Opera House in July.

Other winners include Sarah Connolly, who was presented with the Singer Award. Sarah, who performed earlier this season as Fricka in Keith Warner’s production of Wagner's The Ring Cycle, was praised for her ‘exceptional musicianship and consistency over an increasingly wide range of styles, from the Baroque to Wagner’s The Ring.’

]]>http://www.roh.org.uk/news/importance-of-being-earnest-composer-wins-rps-music-award/feed1Guide to the Royal Opera House Summer Season 2012/13http://www.roh.org.uk/news/guide-to-the-royal-opera-house-summer-season-201213
http://www.roh.org.uk/news/guide-to-the-royal-opera-house-summer-season-201213#commentsWed, 27 Feb 2013 10:52:27 +0000Lottie Butlerhttp://www.roh.org.uk/?p=18114Summer Season 2012/3 One Extraordinary World. The Royal Opera House

Opera

The Importance of Being Earnest by Gerald Barry (Linbury Studio Theatre)
Dir: Ramin Gray
14 June – 22 June
Lively and inventive, the score includes everything from smashing plates to megaphones, and Ramin Gray’s production promises to be just as imaginative as the music.

Simon Boccanegra by Guiseppe Verdi (Main Stage)
Dir: Elijah Moshinsky
27 June – 16 July
'Renowned baritone Thomas Hampson will perform as the Doge of Genoa in one of Verdi’s most compelling works, a role he recently performed to acclaim with Chicago’s Lyric Opera.

Tosca by Giacomo Puccini (Main Stage)
Dir: Jonathan Kent
2 March – 20 July
Drama and passion combine in this turbulent production of Puccini’s classic, set in 19th-century Rome.

La rondineby Giacomo Puccini (Main Stage)
Dir: Nicolas Joël
5 July – 21 July
A sumptuous production with sensational sets, it will bring the glamour of 1920s Paris to the main stage.

The Canticles by Benjamin Britten (Linbury Studio Theatre)
Dir: Neil Bartlett
10 July – 12 July
Five miniature musical gems, The Canticles are the perfect demonstration of Britten’s talent as an opera composer.

Ballet

Mayerling (Main Stage)19 April - 15 June
Adult drama meets sublime choreography in Kenneth MacMillan’s masterpiece. A story of passion and madness based on historical fact.

Hansel and Gretel (Linbury Studio Theatre)
8 May – 11 May
Artist-in-Residence Liam Scarlett presents his first full-length work in the Linbury, a dark re-telling of the Grimm Brothers' classic fairytale.

Witch Hunt (Linbury Studio Theatre)
22 May – 25 May
Cathy Marston brings a new full-length work to the Linbury with Bern: Ballet. Based on the harrowing tale of Anna Göldi, the ‘last witch in Europe’, it promises to be a powerful piece.

Mixed Programme: Raven Girl/Symphony in C (Main Stage)
24 May – 8 June
George Balanchine’s masterpiece Symphony in C will be performed alongside Raven Girl, a brand new work by The Royal Ballet's Resident Choreographer Wayne McGregor, created in collaboration with award-winning author Audrey Niffenegger.

Blood (Linbury Studio Theatre)
27 June & 28 June
Choreographer/dancer Jean Abreu explores the raw experience of being alive through a multimedia production that draws on images by acclaimed artists Gilbert & George. The score is by Paul Wolinski of 65daysofstatic.

Royal Ballet School Summer Performance (Main Stage)
14 July
From students as young as 11 to graduates, dancers from the Royal Ballet School take to the main stage to showcase the breadth of talent.